


The Hollow Generation

by silver_drip



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bullying, Dark, Dementors, Murder, Power Play, Powerful Harry Potter, Slytherin Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28935063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_drip/pseuds/silver_drip
Summary: Hedwig is a kitten and Harry gets sorted into Slytherin. It's a deadly combination on so many levels.
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Harry Potter, Sirius Black & Harry Potter
Comments: 27
Kudos: 149





	The Hollow Generation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TreacleTeacups](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreacleTeacups/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Untouchable](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14371158) by [TreacleTeacups](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreacleTeacups/pseuds/TreacleTeacups). 



> **Trigger warning in the end notes**
> 
> Big thanks to Rahner, siri, aristi for their help!
> 
> This is my abbreviated writing style :p

* * *

A tentative smile and eyes wide with possibility. The train chugged on, a kitten in Harry’s lap. White fur, blue eyes. His first friend, and possibly two more: a redhead and a girl with bushy hair sitting with him. 

A blond hair boy offering up his hand while using the other to shove everyone else down. Harry petted his kitten carefully, giving a simple snub to Malfoy. Hedwig, his kitten, seemed to approve. 

The redhead laughed and Harry tentatively smiled. Was this how friends interacted? 

The train stopped, a boat ride with Hermione’s every word—No peace to be had. Was this how girls talked?

The shifting first-years, whispers and stares. Harry was just as nervous as them, if not more so. 

Names in a row, broken up by a shouting hat and applause. 

“Potter, Harry!” the witch announced. He wished Hedwig was here, a calming presence in his arms. 

Stumbling forward, more eyes on him than ever. A hat chatting in his mind, and then: “Slytherin!”

Silence reigned. 

*

In the darkness of Slytherin commons, windows made of solid water, yet were warm to the touch. 

Malfoy whispering, none of the other Slytherins talking to Harry or even standing close to him. This was fine. This was nothing new to Harry. Yet, he felt a little of the magic of this new life slip away. 

A hissing Head of House, jeering laugh from those around him. 

Finally in the dormroom, Hedwig meowing for him sweetly. Harry took off his robes and cloistered with her in bed, long ago used to holding his bladder when it meant venturing to the bathroom risked his health. 

Hedwig purred, bumping her head against him, whiskers tickling. “Goodnight,” Harry whispered, tears in his eyes. 

*

Awake, the dormroom silent. He always was an early riser, had to be to not get a daily beating. He stretched in bed, patting around for Hedwig, a tangy scent in the air. Far from unfamiliar. He jolted up, fixing his glasses in place. Pulling open the bed curtain and letting in light. 

Red, red, red. 

Not a hint of white fur unstained. 

He was covered in it, red-brown flaking off his skin. 

Blue, hollow eyes. 

Harry knew better than to scream. 

He lost his dinner, more stomach acid than not. 

Cradling Hedwig to his chest. Her already light weight now nonexistent. 

Cold floor under numb feet. 

He had to bury her. 

Bury her. 

Endless dark halls, the head snake looking at him with no remorse, “Detention, Mr. Potter.”

Harry tried to speak. 

With a flick of Snape’s wand Hedwig disappeared. Harry cried out, begging for her back, a litany of words that fell deaf on both their ears.

“I have no interest in trivial power plays.”

A buzzing in his ears grew louder.

*

Adrift, unable to see or hear the words of the ones who did it. 

Harry was promised a life better than what the Dursleys had given him, or was that just another lie he’d told himself to make it through another day?

He followed the dark robes and ties that matched his own to classes. Maybe if he pretended— 

The shoves and spells, the infirmary. A constant high pitched noise in his head, words around him sounding like he was underwater. 

Professors trying to talk to him—But adults never really wanted to hear him. History had taught him that. 

Even Snape couldn’t cut through the fog.

The girl from before—Hermione, was it?

Day in and day out, she tried to pull him from the all encompassing  _ something. _

A mother lion. No one had ever stood up for him before. 

Still, he couldn’t breathe without it feeling like he was filled with shattered glass, slicing him with every movement. 

“...Hedwig…” It was the first word he’d been able to make out in so long. 

He looked up, meeting her eyes. She was blurred. No, he was wearing his glasses. Tears then. 

The words spilled out like he’d cut his own throat. He still couldn’t hear them though. 

How she bristled with indignity. Was this friendship?

Dragged through the halls by his hands, but not yanked into stumbling. 

Half-moon glasses, blue eyes, a long beard. 

Hermione shouting as Harry sat motionless in his seat. 

Hollow.

Harry didn’t need to hear the elderly man’s words to know he’d do nothing. 

Nothing.

*

Hermione’s righteous fury almost cut through the ever present cold. 

Harry sunk into his memories, going as far back as he could. There had been love there, once, before the green took it away. 

Avada Kedavra.

He didn’t speak it. 

He asked Hermione something, not sure what, but it got him a firm nod in return. 

The high pitched noise.

Classes where he didn’t move, barely breathed.

But Hermione.

Hermione.

Hermione.

The first sense he got back was smell. The books in the library they were in more often than not. 

Her determination was a blessing in the face of his apathy. 

Something like Halloween. 

She explained the spell to him, two fold. A spell that he had to cast on himself to cause the second spell he cast to bounce off him and onto the ones in his immediate area. 

“Nothing too bad, though, Harry. It will affect you too.” He wasn’t sure if he heard her words or just imagined them. 

In the dormroom, everyone else on a sugar high. Harry stared at his bed, was shoved but barely moved. 

Slowly everyone went to sleep. 

His hands shook, from hunger rather than emotion. 

The wand he never used. 

He cast the first spell on himself and sat on the bed of the blond who led the rest of the Slytherins. He looked so at peace, and now Harry would too.

_ “Avada Kedavra.” _

*

Snape’s fingers smelled of earth, fresh potion ingredients in a basket as he exited the Forbidden Forest. 

There was a taste in the air he couldn’t place, something that itched at a memory that refused to show itself. 

A profound silence as he entered the castle. The usual snores of the portraits missing. Up gossiping somewhere else, doubtlessly. 

A Hufflepuff prefect laying on the floor.

Severus was quick to pull his wand, looking in every direction before approaching the student. He could already tell she wasn’t breathing. 

A doe loped from his wand and through the silent corridors, in search of the Headmaster. 

Snape didn’t stop moving forward. 

The color of portraits faded. 

Desolate. 

He slammed his fist against Minerva’s door. No response, but he knew the password. 

Motionless in bed. Easily mistaken as asleep, but Snape now knew what the taste in the air was, Death. 

Ravenclaw Tower was the closest. 

Children in their beds or slumped in the common room.

Dead. 

Dead.

Dead. 

A desperate  _ Sonorous _ to see if he’d missed someone—to see if there was a lone soul alive. 

Two prefects, on the ground of the silent halls.

Another  _ Sonorous. _ No response. 

What had happened?  _ What had happened?! _

Flitwick.

Vector. 

Gryffindor tower. 

Finally,  _ finally! _

Granger screamed when she realized she was in the land of the dead. 

Snape dragged her behind him. 

His throat hurt from shouting. 

The cheerful Hufflepuffs, unseeing eyes.

His snakes! And the one he’d swore to protect above all others!

The doors burst open, splinters and shards raining harmlessly on dead bodies. 

And then there was Potter, laid out beside Malfoy’s bed, his wand looking like it had just clattered out of his hand. 

He was blessedly alive.

*

Four survivors, the newspapers read. A muggleborn girl whose name wasn’t released, Severus Snape who had been out of range, Dumbledore who had fled, and Harry Potter. 

One was not like the others.

There was no sense to it. 

A generation gone in a single night.

The blame fell on Snape’s shoulders at first, the rage and grief of countless families remembering his past loyalties. 

The Aurors checked each of their wands. The youngest, the once hero had swung the scythe that harvested many that night. 

The Wizengamot.

Dumbledore in disgrace for fleeing the overpowered spell with his phoenix. 

Snape unable to do anything as the truth of how he treated the boy came out, that  _ damn  _ cat!

The muggleborn was the most vocal even through her sobs. Her wand snapped despite having broken no law. 

The silence of Harry Potter even under the effects of Veritaserum.

*

Sirius could see the sick humor in it, putting the Boy-Who-Lived in the same cell as the man who supposedly got his parents killed. The boy said nothing to him. 

The Aurors were far from silent. 

Sirius didn’t want to believe it, but life had ceased making sense long ago. 

He spoke to Harry until his voice was ragged, shook him to get  _ any _ response—to no avail.

But when he shifted into Padfoot, when he curled around his godson, Harry’s fingers brushed through his fur.

*

_ The Law that May Kill Us All, _ the title of Rita’s article read.

Harry had been a minor. Minors were released from prison when they reached the age of majority. 

No one needed a recap of what happened, of the generation that was lost then the dementor feeding frenzy in Azkaban that had only left two survivors: Harry Potter and Sirius Black. 

The people raged at the coming release of Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Killed. 

But there was also the undercurrent of what would happen if he was denied release, if he even was still in Azkaban. 

Where Britain had claimed Azkaban after the death of a mad wizard, a new dark wizard had taken it back, an army of dementors roaming freely, but contained. 

No one dare set foot in it.

“But what of the war?!” some cried. 

“What if he is our death knell?!” others asked. 

Harry Potter’s seventeenth birthday came. There was no change to be seen of Azkaban. 

But then—Ministry officials fled in fright. Aurors swarmed in the Department of Magical Education. Hate filled words spit out in fear and pain. 

12 NEWTs sat in succession. No one dared to stop him, and he passed regardless. 

*

Even the goblins feared him, an incongruous mangy dog by his side. 

Harry Potter was ever so polite when accessing his vaults. 

A gift he gave. A memory that wasn’t his own, but of a dead wizard from Azkaban that had killed one of their own. The answer to a mystery that hadn’t been forgotten, but thought to be a lost cause.

Far too clever green eyes for someone who’d spent so long in Azkaban. Power that radiated from him. 

Yes, the goblins stayed on his good side. 

*

Diagon Alley, one of the few wizarding havens that hadn’t been touched by the war with the muggles. A war that was rooted in fear from the death of a generation, of a single night. A war that was started to gain back some sense of control. 

How out of control it was now. 

Narcissa Malfoy took comfort where she could. Albireo and Cygni, twins at the age of three.

The hate that had once colored the Malfoy name was now only stained with the knowledge that they had been one of many to lose a child the Hollow Night. 

Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. Sweets for her Albireo and Cygni. She never let them see their pain. Narcissa’s and Lucius’. 

Draco’s bragging letters long since burned. Burned, but still haunting.

And now the Boy-Who-Killed was free. 

Narcissa devoted herself solely to the twins. She’d lose her mind if she didn’t. 

The tinkle of the shop’s door. Albireo practically jumping off his seat to pet a black dog. Lucius had promised him—

Her heart stopped. Everyone seemed to freeze, horror and fear rendering them silent. 

“His name is Padfoot,” Potter explained. “You can pet him.” A child blind to all danger. “You look quite familiar, young man. What is your name?”

Her son—Her only  _ living _ son puffed up with pride. “Albireo Lucius Malfoy.” 

The shadows flickering, the cold of a dementor’s presence here and gone just as fast.

“I once knew a Malfoy.” Potter patted Albireo on his head, a facsimile of kindness. Her son, innocent and oblivious. 

“Please,” Narcissa said, finally finding her voice. “Please…”

Those killing curse green eyes looked at her. Were they the last thing her Draco had seen?

“I’m surprised they let you raise another child. Draco had been the one who killed my cat.” Whispers through the crowd. Skeletal fingers through perfect, blond hair. “Will this one be a psychopath too?” 

Lucius let out a pained cry, his wand exploding in his hand.

“Daddy?” Albireo called out.

A twisted grin. “Run along, little Malfoy.” A slight push, just enough to get the three year old moving.

He turned his back to them, looking at the ice cream selection.

Peanut butter ice cream. A hearty tip. 

*

Bombs. 

The death count had long ago exceeded Hollow Night’s. 

No patronus from Minister Fudge’s wand. Three from the ones accompanying him. 

Hogwarts. 

Even the ghosts hadn’t survived that night. 

Dementors. Who would have thought they’d encircle the once-school. Sucking all life that would dare approach it. 

The castle had been untouched beyond removing the bodies to put them to rest. Now a fortress, invulnerable even to the muggle attacks. An invisible dome that ate fire. The freezing retaliation of dementors that somehow always found those that had fired the missiles.

The muggles had given up on it, but it was wizarding Britain’s last chance. 

An owl sent in desperation, returned with hope. 

The dementors guided them inward, not perturbed by the patroni, not as mindless as he remembered them being. 

Led not to the great hall or seat of power. The library, the biggest in wizarding Britain. 

Fudge realized Potter was short for his age. A dog by his feet, a book in hand. 

Green eyes looked up. Fudge nearly choked on the tension. 

An explanation of the state of their country, a plea, as humble as Fudge could force himself to be. Begging. 

“You want me to fight your war?” Potter asked, unaffected.

Fudge simpered. What was a war to a killer of children.

“I was eleven,” Potter hissed out. 

Fudge didn’t see how that mattered. Murder was murder. 

He steered away. “You saved us once. The muggles are going to kill us all.”

Potter tapped his fingers on the table, like a heartbeat, like all the heartbeats that he had ended. 

His shadow flickered. The Auror’s patroni faded. Disappeared. 

Fudge couldn’t breathe. 

Potter’s shadow split, dementors taking shape. Potter held up a goblet. Deathly grey fingers took it from him, leaning in as if to give the final Kiss—The silver of a memory fell from its lipless mouth. A new horror that Fudge didn’t want to contemplate. 

Unwavering green eyes as he drank from the goblet. 

The dog at his feet whimpered then laid its head on Potter’s lap. 

“Savior, destroyer. You really don’t care.” He ran his fingers through the dog’s fur. 

“The least you can do is end the war,” Fudge squeaked. 

“The least I can do,” he said with no inflection. 

More dementors emerged from his shadow. 

“The least I can do,” Potter echoed. “Fine.” With a flick of his hand the dementor glided in all directions—went  _ through _ Fudge and his Aurors. “Just remember you asked for this.” 

Soon, the world was silent—but for the sound of pages turning and a dog whimpering. 

**Author's Note:**

> **Trigger warning: Non-graphic animal death, death of children, suicide attempt**


End file.
